Awakening out of identifying your sense of self with the thoughts in your mind and your body, into a sense of a flow consciousness without any sense of separation between yourself and what you perceive, wherein you experience life as a unified field of awareness and mental-emotional suffering ceases as a result, because there is no longer a mentally-constructed self in the center of your being who takes things personally.

Combining the rational depictions of my studies with the stories of people I’ve met and the phenomenological study of the book called “The Finders,” there is substantial evidence.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m on a journey of awakening, which means that my level of awareness is the primary thing in life.

I don’t consider myself to have much choice in the matter; in a nondual (“no separation”) universe, I’m told, there is really no separate person, and so awakening finds you as much as you find it. Ultimately, one comes to realize that life is not personal, I’m told.

Though I have many privileges, this has not been an easy life, and I can see how through many hardships life has progressively stripped me of attachments to egoic identity, but I still have a long way to go, and I don’t expect the challenges to stop coming.

And that can be ok, if it leads me to greater inner stillness and a sense of being at home and okay in the present moment, regardless of externalities.

I can also see how my level of awareness has increased and more and more I’m getting into witnessing consciousness and pure awareness, especially as I keep my meditation practice up. I’ve also had significant tastes of the nondual experience several times, so I know there’s a “there” there.

I’m also coming to accept that, while I’ll do my best to enjoy life and do all the things that make for happiness, hardships may continue to arise that will push me in the direction of increased presence, witnessing, and awareness outside of lostness in identification with the torrent of thoughts. I mean the other option is to seek distraction and fulfillment in externalities.

Don’t get me wrong; I do believe that balance and attending to the wants and needs of life is a good thing, and it’s important not to bypass through spirituality. I haven’t entirely figured out what that looks like practically.

I am very wary of getting into detachment and world-denying mentalities, which I deeply suffered from in Christian fundamentalism. Maybe they were onto something in a certain sense, however, but they took it to an extreme. That is, ultimate and lasting fulfillment doesn’t come from temporary circumstances, which always change. But levels of consciousness can be attained in which lasting peace and happiness are achieved, even if life gets really challenging.

Fortunately, Tantra does integrate pleasure and life live fully expressed in the manifest world, so a tradition that resonates has found me (nondual Śaiva tantra, alongside mystical traditions and elements of Buddhism). I also realize that I’ve found a spiritual lineage that resonates with me, but more came into my life through my missionary work in in Tennessee other exposures more than my seeking it out intentionally.

Is this another religion? There are certainly elements of belief, but it is also far more grounded in philosophy and empirical observation than Christian fundamentalism ever was for me, a kind of science of Enlightenment (Sanskrit: vidyābodha).

A big takeaway for me in all this has also been the idea of surrender. My ego’s belief that I have to “make spiritual awareness happen” stems from a sense of separation and reinforces it. The consciousness outside me has perhaps a bigger role to plan in awakening than that within.

As they say in nondual Śaivism, when Śiva (=nondual consciousness) chooses to awaken out of its pure freedom, it happens.

This means that it’s less about my efforts, frail willpower, apathy, and at times despair about spirituality, and more about a flow, a current of awakening that’s happening and that I can align to, a natural process that, once initiated, will surely attain its result, as surely as a river finds its way into the sea.